BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.
Having observed the dissolution of the gentile order in the three
concrete cases of the Greek, Roman, and German nations, we may now
investigate in conclusion the general economic conditions that began by
undermining the gentile organization of society during the upper stage
of barbarism and ended by doing away with it entirely at the advent of
civilization. Marx's "Capital" will be as necessary for the successful
completion of this task as Morgan's "Ancient Society."
A growth of the middle stage and a product of further development during
the upper stage of savagery, the gens reached its prime, as near as we
can judge from our sources of information, in the lower stage of
barbarism. With this stage, then, we begin our investigation.
In our standard example, the American redskins of that time, we find the
gentile constitution fully developed. A tribe had differentiated into
several gentes, generally two. Through the increase of the population,
these original gentes again divided into several daughter gentes, making
the mother gens a phratry. The tribe itself split up into several
tribes, in each of which we again meet a large number of representatives
of the old gentes. In certain cases a federation united the related
tribes. This simple organization fully sufficed for the social
conditions out of which it had grown. It was nothing else than the
innate, spontaneous expression of those conditions, and it was well
calculated to smooth over all internal difficulties that could arise in
this social organization. External difficulties were settled by war.
Such a war could end in the annihilation of a tribe, but never in its
subjugation. It is the grandeur and at the same time the limitation of
the gentile order that it has no room either for masters or servants.
There were as yet no distinctions between rights and duties. The
question whether he had a right to take part in public affairs, to
practice blood revenge or to demand atonement for injuries would have
appeared as absurd to an Indian, as the question whether it was his duty
to eat, sleep, and hunt. Nor could any division of a tribe or gens into
different classes take place. This leads us to the investigation of the
economic basis of those conditions.
The population was very small in numbers. It was collected only on the
territory of the tribe. Next to this territory was the hunting ground
surrounding it in a wide circle. A neutral forest formed the line of
demarcation from other tribes. The division of labor was quite
primitive. The work was simply divided between the two sexes. The men
went to war, hunted, fished, provided the raw material for food and the
tools necessary for these pursuits. The women cared for the house, and
prepared food and clothing; they cooked, weaved and sewed. Each sex was
master of its own field of activity; the men in the forest, the women in
the house. Each sex also owned the tools made and used by it; the men
were the owners of the weapons, of the hunting and fishing tackle, the
women of the household goods and utensils. The household was
communistic, comprising several, and often many, families.[37] Whatever
was produced and used collectively, was regarded as common property: the
house, the garden, the long boat. Here, and only here, then, do we find
the "self-earned property" which jurists and economists have falsely
attributed to civilized society, the last deceptive pretext of legality
on which modern capitalist property is leaning.
But humanity did not everywhere remain in this stage. In Asia they found
animals that could be tamed and propagated in captivity. The wild
buffalo cow had to be hunted down; the tame cow gave birth to a calf
once a year, and also furnished milk. Some of the most advanced
tribes--Aryans, Semites, perhaps also Turanians--devoted themselves
mainly to taming, and later to raising and tending, domestic animals.
The segregation of cattle raising tribes from the rest of the barbarians
constitutes the first great division of social labor. These stock
raising tribes did not only produce more articles of food than the rest
of the barbarians, but also different kinds of products. They were ahead
of the others by having at their disposal not alone milk, milk products,
and a greater abundance of meat, but also skins, wool, goat's hair, and
the spun and woven goods which the growing abundance of the raw material
brought into common use. This for the first time made a regular exchange
of products possible. In former stages, exchange could only take place
occasionally, and an exceptional ability in manufacturing weapons and
tools may have led to a transient division of labor. For example,
unquestionable remains of workshops for stone implements of the
neolithic period have been found in many places. The artists who
developed their ability in those shops, most probably worked for the
collectivity, as did the artisans of the Indian gentile order. At any
rate, no other exchange than that within the tribe could exist in that
stage, and even that was an exception. But after the segregation of the
stock raising tribes we find all the conditions favorable to an exchange
between groups of different tribes, and to a further development of this
mode of trading into a fixed institution. Originally, tribe exchanged
with tribe through the agency of their tribal heads. But when the herds
drifted into the hands of private individuals, then the exchange between
individuals prevailed more and more, until it became the established
form. The principal article of exchange which the stock raising tribes
offered to their neighbors was in the form of domestic animals. Cattle
became the favorite commodity by which all other commodities were
measured in exchange. In short, cattle assumed the functions of money
and served in this capacity as early as that stage. With such necessity
and rapidity was the demand for a money commodity developed at the very
beginning of the exchange of commodities.
Horticulture, probably unknown to the Asiatic barbarians of the lower
stage, arose not later than the middle stage of barbarism, as the
forerunner of agriculture. The climate of the Turanian Highland does not
admit of a nomadic life without a supply of stock feed for the long and
hard winter. Hence the cultivation of meadows and grain was
indispensable. The same is true of the steppes north of the Black Sea.
Once grain had been grown for cattle, it soon became human food. The
cultivated land belonged as yet to the tribe and was assigned first to
the gens, which in its turn distributed it to the households, and
finally to individuals; always for use only, not for possession. The
users may have had certain claims to the land, but that was all.
Two of the industrial acquisitions of this stage are especially
important. The first is the weaving loom, the second the melting of
metal ore and the use of metals in manufacture. Copper, tin, and their
alloy, bronze, were the most essential of them. Bronze furnished tools
and weapons, but could not displace stone implements. Only iron could
have done that, but the production of iron was as yet unknown. Gold and
silver were already used for ornament and decoration, and must have been
far more precious than copper and bronze.
The increase of production in all branches--stock raising, agriculture,
domestic handicrafts--enabled human labor power to produce more than was
necessary for its maintenance. It increased at the same time the amount
of daily work that fell to the lot of every member of a gens, a
household, or a single family. The addition of more labor power became
desirable. It was furnished by war; the captured enemies were
transformed into slaves. Under the given historical conditions, the
first great division of social labor, by increasing the productivity of
labor, adding to the wealth, and enlarging the field of productive
activity, necessarily carried slavery in its wake. Out of the first
great division of social labor arose the first great division of society
into two classes: masters and servants, exploiters and exploited.
How and when the herds were transferred from the collective ownership of
the tribe or gens to the proprietorship of the heads of the families, is
not known to us. But it must have been practically accomplished in this
stage. The herds and the other new objects of wealth brought about a
revolution in the family. Procuring the means of existence had always
been the man's business. The tools of production were manufactured and
owned by him. The herds were the new tools of production, and their
taming and tending was his work. Hence he owned the cattle and the
commodities and slaves obtained in exchange for them. All the surplus
now resulting from production fell to the share of the man. The woman
shared in its fruition, but she could not claim its ownership. The
"savage" warrior and hunter had been content to occupy the second place
in the house, to give precedence to the woman. The "gentler" shepherd,
standing on his wealth, assumed the first place and forced the woman
back into the second place. And she had no occasion to complain. The
division of labor in the family had regulated the distribution of
property between man and wife. This division of labor remained
unchanged. Yet the former domestic relation was now reversed, simply
because the division of labor outside of the family had been altered.
The same cause that once had secured the supremacy in the house for
women, viz., the confining of women's activity to domestic labor, now
assured the supremacy of the men in the households. The domestic labor
of women was considered insignificant in comparison to men's work for a
living. The latter was everything, the former a negligible quantity. At
this early stage we can already see that the emancipation of women and
their equality with men are impossible and remain so, as long as women
are excluded from social production and restricted to domestic labor.
The emancipation of women becomes feasible only then when women are
enabled to take part extensively in social production, and when domestic
duties require their attention in a minor degree. This state of things
was brought about by the modern great industries, which not only admit
of women's liberal participation in production, but actually call for it
and, besides, endeavor to transform domestic work also into a public
industry.
Man's advent to practical supremacy in the household marked the removal
of the last barrier to his universal supremacy. His unlimited rule was
emphasized and endowed with continuity by the downfall of matriarchy,
the introduction of patriarchy, and the gradual transition from the
pairing family to the monogamic family. This made a breach in the old
gentile order. The monogamic family became a power and lifted a
threatening hand against the gens.
The next step brings us to the upper stage of barbarism, that period in
which all nations of civilization go through their heroic era. It is the
time of the iron sword, but also of the iron plow share and axe. The
iron had become the servant of man. It is the last and most important of
all raw products that play a revolutionary role in history; the last--if
we except the potato.
Iron brought about agriculture on a larger scale and the clearing of
extensive forest tracts for cultivation. It gave to the craftsman a tool
of such hardness and sharpness that no stone, no other known metal,
could withstand it. All this came about gradually. The first iron was
often softer than bronze. Therefore stone implements disappeared very
slowly. Not only in the Hildebrand Song, but also at Hastings in 1066,
stone axes were still used in fighting. But progress was now
irresistible, less interrupted and more rapid. The town, inclosing
houses of stone or tiles within its turreted and crested stone walls,
became the central seat of the tribe or federation of tribes. It showed
an astounding progress of architecture, but also an increase of danger
and of the demand for protection. Wealth increased rapidly, but it was
the wealth of private individuals. Weaving, metal work and other more
and more differentiating industries developed an increasing variety and
display of art in production. Agriculture furnished not alone grain,
peas, beans and fruit, but also oil and wine, the preparation of which
had now been learned. Such a diversity of action could not be displayed
by any single individual. The second great division of labor took place:
handicrafts separated from agriculture. The growing intensity of
production and the increased productivity enhanced the value of human
labor power. Slavery, which had been a rising and sporadic factor in the
preceding stage, now became an essential part of the social system. The
slaves ceased to be simple assistants. They were now driven in scores to
the work in the fields and shops. The division of production into two
great branches, agriculture and handicrafts, gave rise to production for
exchange, the production of commodities. Trade arose at the same time,
not only in the interior and on the tribal boundaries, but also in the
form of maritime exchange. All this was as yet in a very undeveloped
state. The precious metals gained preference as a universal money
commodity, but still uncoined and exchanged merely by dead weight.
The distinction between rich and poor was added to that between free men
and slaves. This and the new division of labor constitute a new division
of society into classes. The differences in the amount of property
belonging to the several family heads broke up the old communistic
households one by one, wherever they might have been preserved thus far.
This made an end to the collective cultivation of the soil for the
account of the community. The cultivated land was assigned for use to
the several families, first for a limited time, later for once and all.
The transition to full private property was accomplished gradually and
simultaneously with the transition from the pairing family to monogamy.
The monogamous family began to be the economic unit of society.
The increase of population necessitated a closer consolidation against
internal and external foes. The federation of related tribes became
unavoidable. Their amalgamation, and thence the amalgamation of the
separate tribal territories to one national territory, was the following
step. The military leader--rex, basileus, thiudans--became an
indispensable and standing official. The public meeting was introduced
wherever it did not yet exist. The military leader, the council of
chiefs, and the public meeting formed the organs of the military
democracy that had grown out of the gentile constitution. Military
democracy--for now war and organization for war were regular functions
of social life. The wealth of the neighbors excited the greed of nations
that began to regard the acquisition of wealth as one of the main
purposes of their life. They were barbarians: robbing appeared to them
easier and more honorable than producing. War, once simply a revenge for
transgressions or a means for enlarging a territory that had become too
narrow, was now waged for the sake of plunder alone and became a regular
profession. Not in vain did threatening walls cast a rigid stare all
around the new fortified towns: their yawning ditches were the tomb of
the gentile constitution, and their turrets already reached up into
civilization. The internal affairs underwent a similar change. The
plundering wars increased the power of the military leader and of the
subcommanders. The habitual election of the successors from the same
family was gradually transformed into hereditary succession, first by
sufferance, then by claim, and finally by usurpation. Thus the
foundation of hereditary royalty and nobility was laid. In this manner
the organs of the gentile constitution were gradually torn away from
their roots in the nation, tribe, phratry and gens, and the whole
gentile order reversed into its antithesis. The organization of tribes
for the purpose of the free administration of affairs was turned into an
organization for plundering and oppressing their neighbors. The organs
of gentilism changed from servants of the public will to independent
organs of rule oppressing their own people. This could not have
happened, if the greed for wealth had not divided the gentiles into rich
and poor; if the "difference of property in a gens had not changed the
community of interest into antagonism of the gentiles" (Karl Marx); and
if the extension of slavery had not begun by branding work for a living
as slavish and more ignominious than plundering.
* * * * *
We have now reached the threshold of civilization. This stage is
inaugurated by a new progress in the division of labor. In the lower
stage of barbarism production was carried on for use only; any acts of
exchange were confined to single cases when a surplus was accidentally
realized. In the middle stage of barbarism we find that the possession
of cattle gave a regular surplus to the nomadic nations with
sufficiently large herds. At the same time there was a division of labor
between nomadic nations and backward nations without herds. The
existence of two different stages of production side by side furnished
the conditions necessary for a regular exchange. The upper stage of
barbarism introduced a new division of labor between agriculture and
handicrafts, resulting in the production of a continually increasing
amount of commodities for the special purpose of exchange, so that
exchange between individuals became a vital function of society.
Civilization strengthened and intensified all the established divisions
of labor, especially by rendering the contrast between city and country
more pronounced. Either the town may have the economic control over the
country, as during antiquity, or vice versa, as in the middle ages. A
third division of labor was added by civilization: it created a class
that did not take part in production, but occupied itself merely with
the exchange of products--the merchants. All former attempts at class
formation were exclusively concerned with production. They divided the
producers into directors and directed, or into producers on a more or
less extensive scale. But here a class appears for the first time that
captures the control of production in general and subjugates the
producers to its rule, without taking the least part in production. A
class that makes itself the indispensable mediator between two producers
and exploits them both under the pretext of saving them the trouble and
risk of exchange, of extending the markets for their products to distant
regions, and of thus becoming the most useful class in society; a class
of parasites, genuine social ichneumons, that skim the cream off
production at home and abroad as a reward for very insignificant
services; that rapidly amass enormous wealth and gain social influence
accordingly; that for this reason reap ever new honors and ever greater
control of production during the period of civilization, until they at
last bring to light a product of their own--periodical crises in
industry.
At the stage of production under discussion, our young merchant class
had no inkling as yet of the great future that was in store for them.
But they continued to organize, to make themselves invaluable, and that
was sufficient for the moment. At the same time metal coins came into
use, and through them a new device for controlling the producers and
their products. The commodity of commodities that was hiding all other
commodities in its mysterious bosom had been discovered, a charm that
could be transformed at will into any desirable or coveted thing.
Whoever held it in his possession had the world of production at his
command. And who had it above all others? The merchant. In his hands the
cult of money was safe. He took care to make it plain that all
commodities, and hence all producers, must prostrate themselves in
adoration before money. He proved by practice that all other forms of
wealth are reduced to thin wraiths before this personification of
riches. Never again did the power of money show itself in such
primordial brutality and violence as in its youthful days. After the
sale of commodities for money came the borrowing of money, resulting in
interest and usury. And no legislation of any later period stretches the
debtor so mercilessly at the feet of the speculating creditor as the
antique Grecian and Roman codes--both of them spontaneous products of
habit, without any other than economic pressure.
The wealth in commodities and slaves was now further increased by large
holdings in land. The titles of the individuals to the lots of land
formerly assigned to them by the gens or tribe had become so well
established, that these lots were now owned and inherited. What the
individuals had most desired of late was the liberation from the claim
of the gentiles to their lots, a claim which had become a veritable
fetter for them. They were rid of this fetter--but soon after they were
also rid of their lots. The full, free ownership of the soil implied not
only the possibility of uncurtailed possession, but also of selling the
soil. As long as the soil belonged to the gens, this was impossible. But
when the new land owner shook off the chains of the priority claim of
the gens and tribe, he also tore the bond that had so long tied him
indissolubly to the soil. What that meant was impressed on him by the
money invented simultaneously with the advent of private property in
land. The soil could now become a commodity to be bought and sold.
Hardly had private ownership of land been introduced, when the mortgage
put in its appearance (see Athens). As hetaerism and prostitution clung
to the heels of monogamy, so does from now on the mortgage to private
ownership in land. You have clamored for free, full, saleable land.
Well, then, there you have it--tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin; it was
your own wish, George Dandin.
Industrial expansion, money, usury, private land, and mortgage thus
progressed with the concentration and centralization of wealth in the
hands of a small class, accompanied by the increasing impoverishment of
the masses and the increasing mass of paupers. The new aristocracy of
wealth, so far as it did not coincide with the old tribal nobility,
forced the latter permanently into the background (in Athens, in Rome,
among the Germans). And this division of free men into classes according
to their wealth was accompanied, especially in Greece, by an enormous
increase in the number of slaves[38] whose forced labor formed the basis
on which the whole superstructure of society was reared.
Let us now see what became of the gentile constitution through this
revolution of society. Gentilism stood powerless in the face of the new
elements that had grown without its assistance. It was dependent on the
condition that the members of a gens, or of a tribe, should live
together in the same territory and be its exclusive inhabitants. That
had long ceased to be the case. Gentes and tribes were everywhere
hopelessly intermingled, slaves, clients, and foreigners lived among
citizens. The capacity for settling down permanently which had only been
acquired near the end of the middle stage of barbarism, was time and
again sidetracked by the necessity of changing the abode according to
the dictates of commerce, different occupations and the transfer of
land. The members of the gentile organizations could no longer meet for
the purpose of taking care of their common interests. Only matters of
little importance, such as religious festivals, were still observed in
an indifferent way. Beside the wants and interests for the care of which
the gentile organs were appointed and fitted, new wants and interests
had arisen from the revolution of the conditions of existence and the
resulting change in social classification. These new wants and interests
were not only alien to the old gentile order, but thwarted it in every
way. The interests of the craftsmen created by division of labor, and
the special necessities of a town differing from those of the country,
required new organs. But every one of these groups was composed of
people from different gentes, phratries, and tribes; they included even
strangers. Hence the new organs necessarily had to form outside of the
gentile constitution. But by the side of it meant against it. And again,
in every gentile organization the conflict of interests made itself felt
and reached its climax by combining rich and poor, usurers and debtors,
in the same gens and tribe. There was furthermore the mass of
inhabitants who were strangers to the gentiles. These strangers could
become very powerful, as in Rome, and they were too numerous to be
gradually absorbed by the gentes and tribes. The gentiles confronted
these masses as a compact body of privileged individuals. What had once
been a natural democracy, had been transformed into an odious
aristocracy. The gentile constitution had grown out of a society that
did not know any internal contradictions, and it was only adapted to
such a society. It had no coërcive power except public opinion. But now
a society had developed that by force of all its economic conditions of
existence divided humanity into freemen and slaves, and exploiting rich
and exploited poor. A society that not only could never reconcile these
contradictions, but drove them ever more to a climax. Such a society
could only exist by a continual open struggle of all classes against one
another, or under the supremacy of a third power that under a pretense
of standing above the struggling classes stifled their open conflict and
permitted a class struggle only on the economic field, in a so-called
"legal" form. Gentilism had ceased to live. It was crushed by the
division of labor and by its result, the division of society into
classes. It was replaced by the State.
* * * * *
In preceding chapters we have shown by three concrete examples the three
main forms in which the state was built up on the ruins of gentilism.
Athens represented the simplest, the classic type: the state grew
directly and mainly out of class divisions that developed within gentile
society. In Rome the gentile organization became an exclusive
aristocracy amid a numerous plebs of outsiders who had only duties, but
no rights. The victory of the plebs burst the old gentile order asunder
and erected on its remains the state which soon engulfed both gentile
aristocracy and plebs. Finally, among the German conquerors of the Roman
empire, the state grew as a direct result of the conquest of large
foreign territories which the gentile constitution was powerless to
control. But this conquest did not necessitate either a serious fight
with the former population or a more advanced division of labor.
Conquerors and conquered were almost in the same stage of economic
development, so that the economic basis of society remained undisturbed.
Hence gentilism could preserve for many centuries an unchanged
territorial character in the form of mark communes, and even rejuvenate
itself in the nobility and patrician families of later years, or in the
peasantry, as e. g. in Dithmarsia.[39]
The state, then, is by no means a power forced on society from outside;
neither is it the "realization of the ethical idea," "the image and the
realization of reason," as Hegel maintains. It is simply a product of
society at a certain stage of evolution. It is the confession that this
society has become hopelessly divided against itself, has entangled
itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is powerless to banish.
In order that these contradictions, these classes with conflicting
economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a
useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above
society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and
maintaining "order." And this power, the outgrowth of society, but
assuming supremacy over it and becoming more and more divorced from it,
is the state.
The state differs from gentilism in that it first divides its members by
territories. As we have seen, the old bonds of blood kinship uniting the
gentile bodies had become inefficient, because they were dependent on
the condition, now no longer a fact, that all gentiles should live on a
certain territory. The territory was the same; but the human beings had
changed. Hence the division by territories was chosen as the point of
departure, and citizens had to exercise their rights and duties wherever
they chose their abode without regard to gens and tribe. This
organization of inhabitants by localities is a common feature of all
states. It seems natural to us now. But we have seen what long and hard
fighting was required before it could take, in Athens and Rome, the
place of the old organization by blood kinship.
In the second place, the state created a public power of coërcion that
did no longer coincide with the old self-organized and armed population.
This special power of coërcion is necessary, because a self-organized
army of the people has become impossible since the division of society
into classes took place. For the slaves belonged also to society. The
90,000 citizens of Athens formed only a privileged class compared to the
365,000 slaves. The popular army of the Athenian democracy was an
aristocratic public power designed to keep the slaves down. But we have
seen that a police force became also necessary to maintain order among
the citizens. This public power of coërcion exists in every state. It is
not composed of armed men alone, but has also such objects as prisons
and correction houses attached to it, that were unknown to gentilism. It
may be very small, almost infinitesimal, in societies with feebly
developed class antagonisms and in out of the way places, as was once
the case in certain regions of the United States. But it increases in
the same ratio in which the class antagonisms become more pronounced,
and in which neighboring states become larger and more populous. A
conspicuous example is modern Europe, where the class struggles and wars
of conquest have nursed the public power to such a size that it
threatens to swallow the whole society and the state itself.
In order to maintain this public power, contributions of the citizens
become necessary--the taxes. These were absolutely unknown in gentile
society. But to-day we get our full measure of them. As civilization
makes further progress, these taxes are no longer sufficient to cover
public expenses. The state makes drafts on the future, contracts loans,
public debts. Old Europe can tell a story of them.
In possession of the public power and of the right of taxation, the
officials in their capacity as state organs are now exalted above
society. The free and voluntary respect that was accorded to the organs
of gentilism does not satisfy them any more, even if they might have it.
Representatives of a power that is divorced from society, they must
enforce respect by exceptional laws that render them specially sacred
and inviolable.[40] The lowest police employee of the civilized state
has more "authority" than all the organs of gentilism combined. But the
mightiest prince and the greatest statesman or general of civilization
may look with envy on the spontaneous and undisputed esteem that was the
privilege of the least gentile sachem. The one stands in the middle of
society, the other is forced to assume a position outside and above it.
The state is the result of the desire to keep down class conflicts. But
having arisen amid these conflicts, it is as a rule the state of the
most powerful economic class that by force of its economic supremacy
becomes also the ruling political class and thus acquires new means of
subduing and exploiting the oppressed masses. The antique state was,
therefore, the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding the
slaves in check. The feudal state was the organ of the nobility for the
oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers. The modern representative
state is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labor. At certain
periods it occurs exceptionally that the struggling classes balance each
other so nearly that the public power gains a certain degree of
independence by posing as the mediator between them. The absolute
monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth century was in such a
position, balancing the nobles and the burghers against one another. So
was the Bonapartism of the first, and still more of the second, empire,
playing the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and vice versa. The
latest performance of this kind, in which ruler and ruled appear equally
ridiculous, is the new German empire of Bismarckian make, in which
capitalists and laborers are balanced against one another and equally
cheated for the benefit of the degenerate Prussian cabbage junkers.[41]
In most of the historical states, the rights of the citizens are
differentiated according to their wealth. This is a direct confirmation
of the fact that the state is organized for the protection of the
possessing against the non-possessing classes. The Athenian and Roman
classification by incomes shows this. It is also seen in the medieval
state of feudalism in which the political power depended on the quantity
of real estate. It is again seen in the electoral qualifications of the
modern representative state. The political recognition of the
differences in wealth is by no means essential. On the contrary, it
marks a low stage of state development. The highest form of the state,
the democratic republic, knows officially nothing of property
distinctions.[42] It is that form of the state which under modern
conditions of society becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity.
The last decisive struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can only
be fought out under this state form.[43] In such a state, wealth exerts
its power indirectly, but all the more safely. This is done partly in
the form of direct corruption of officials, after the classical type of
the United States, or in the form of an alliance between government and
bankers which is established all the more easily when the public debt
increases and when corporations concentrate in their hands not only the
means of transportation, but also production itself, using the stock
exchange as a center. The United States and the latest French republic
are striking examples, and good old Switzerland has contributed its
share to illustrate this point. That a democratic republic is not
necessary for this fraternal bond between stock exchange and government
is proved by England and last, not least, Germany, where it is doubtful
whether Bismarck or Bleichroeder was more favored by the introduction of
universal suffrage.[44] The possessing class rules directly through
universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class, in this case the
proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long
will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one
possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing, of the capitalist
class. But the more the proletariat matures toward its
self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate
class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists.
Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It
can and will never be anything else but that in the modern state. But
that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal
suffrage reaches its boiling point among the laborers, they as well as
the capitalists will know what to do.
The state, then, did not exist from all eternity. There have been
societies without it, that had no idea of any state or public power. At
a certain stage of economic development, which was of necessity
accompanied by a division of society into classes, the state became the
inevitable result of this division. We are now rapidly approaching a
stage of evolution in production, in which the existence of classes has
not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter on
production. Hence these classes must fall as inevitably as they once
arose. The state must irrevocably fall with them. The society that is to
reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of
the producers, will transfer the machinery of state where it will then
belong: into the Museum of Antiquities by the side of the spinning
wheel and the bronze ax.
* * * * *
Civilization is, as we have seen, that stage of society, in which the
division of labor, the resulting exchange between individuals, and the
production of commodities combining them, reach their highest
development and revolutionize the whole society.
The production of all former stages of society was mainly collective,
and consumption was carried on by direct division of products within
more or less small communes. This collective production was confined
within the narrowest limits. But it implied the control of production
and of the products by the producers. They knew what became of their
product: it did not leave their hands until it was consumed by them. As
long as production moved on this basis, it could not grow beyond the
control of the producers, and it could not create any strange ghostly
forces against them. Under civilization, however, this is the inevitable
rule.
Into the simple process of production, the division of labor was
gradually interpolated. It undermined the communism of production and
consumption, it made the appropriation of products by single individuals
the prevailing rule, and thus introduced the exchange between
individuals, in the manner mentioned above. Gradually, the production of
commodities became the rule.
This mode of production for exchange, not for home consumption,
necessarily passes the products on from hand to hand. The producer gives
his product away in exchange. He does no longer know what becomes of it.
With the advent of money and of the trader who steps in as a middleman
between the producers, the process of exchange becomes still more
complicated. The fate of the products becomes still more uncertain. The
number of merchants is great and one does not know what the other is
doing. The products now pass not only from hand to hand, but also from
market to market. The producers have lost the control of the aggregate
production in their sphere of life, and the merchants have not yet
acquired this control. Products and production become the victims of
chance. But chance is only one pole of an interrelation, the other pole
of which is called necessity. In nature, where chance seems to reign
also, we have long ago demonstrated the innate necessity and law that
determines the course of chance on every line. But what is true of
nature, holds also good of society. Whenever a social function or a
series of social processes become too powerful for the control of man,
whenever they grow beyond the grasp of man and seem to be left to mere
chance, then the peculiar and innate laws of such processes shape the
course of chance with increased elementary necessity. Such laws also
control the vicissitudes of the production and exchange of commodities.
For the individual producer and exchanger, these laws are strange, and
often unknown, forces, the nature of which must be laboriously
investigated and ascertained. These economic laws of production are
modified by the different stages of this form of production. But
generally speaking, the entire period of civilization is dominated by
these laws. To this day, the product controls the producer. To this day,
the aggregate production of society is managed, not on a uniform plan,
but by blind laws, that rule with elementary force and find their final
expression in the storms of periodical commercial crises.
We have seen that human labor power is enabled at a very early stage of
production to produce considerably more than is needed to maintain the
producer. We have found that this stage coïncided in general with the
first appearance of the division of labor and of exchange between
individuals. Now, it was not long before the great truth was discovered
that man may himself be a commodity, and that human labor power may be
exchanged and exploited by transforming a man into a slave. Hardly had
exchange between men been established, when men themselves were also
exchanged. The active asset became a passive liability, whether man
wanted it or not.
Slavery, which reaches its highest development in civilization,
introduced the first great division of an exploited and an exploiting
class into society. This division continued during the whole period of
civilization. Slavery is the first form of exploitation, characteristic
of the antique world. Then followed feudalism in the middle ages, and
wage labor in recent times. These are the three great forms of
servitude, characteristic of the three great epochs of civilization.
Their invariable mark is either open or, in modern times, disguised
slavery.
The stage of commodity production introducing civilization is marked
economically by the introduction of (1) metal coins and, thus, of money
as capital, of interest, and of usury; (2) merchants as middlemen
between producers; (3) private property and mortgage; (4) slave labor as
the prevailing form of production. The form of the family corresponding
to civilization and becoming its pronounced custom is monogamy, the
supremacy of man over woman, and the monogamous family as the economic
unit of society. The aggregation of civilized society is the state,
which throughout all typical periods is the state of the ruling class,
and in all cases mainly a machine for controlling the oppressed and
exploited class. Civilization is furthermore characterized on one side
by the permanent introduction of the contrast between city and country
as the basis of the entire division of social labor; on the other side
by the introduction of the testament by which the property holder is
enabled to dispose of his property beyond the hour of his death. This
institution is a direct blow at the gentile constitution, and was
unknown in Athens until the time of Solon. In Rome it was introduced
very early, but we do not know when.[45] In Germany it was originated by
the priests in order that the honest German might bequeath his property
to the church without any interference.
With this fundamental constitution, civilization had accomplished things
for which the old gentile society was no match whatever. But these
exploits were accomplished by playing on the most sordid passions and
instincts of man, and by developing them at the expense of all his other
gifts. Barefaced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from
its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the
third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual,
was its only and final aim. If nevertheless the advanced development of
science, and at repeated times the highest flower of art, fell into its
lap, this was only due to the fact that without them the highest
emoluments of modern wealth would have been missing. Exploitation of one
class by another being the basis of civilization, its whole development
involves a continual contradiction. Every progress of production is at
the same time a retrogression in the condition of the oppressed class,
that is of the great majority. Every benefit for one class is
necessarily an evil for the other, every new emancipation of one class a
new oppression for the other. The most drastic proof of this is
furnished by the introduction of machinery, the effects of which are
well known to-day. And while there is hardly any distinction between
rights and duties among barbarians, as we have seen, civilization makes
the difference between these two plain even to the dullest mind. For now
one class has nearly all the rights, the other class nearly all the
duties.
But this is not admitted. What is good for the ruling class, is alleged
to be good for the whole of society with which the ruling class
identifies itself. The more civilization advances, the more it is found
to cover with the cloak of charity the evils necessarily created by it,
to excuse them or to deny their existence, in short to introduce a
conventional hypocrisy that culminates in the declaration: The
exploitation of the oppressed class is carried on by the exploiting
class solely in the interest of the exploited class itself. And if the
latter does not recognize this, but even becomes rebellious, it is
simply the worst ingratitude to its benefactors, the exploiters.[46]
And now, in conclusion, let me add Morgan's judgment of civilization
(Ancient Society, page 552):
"Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so
immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its
management so intelligent in the interest of its owners that it has
become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind
stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will
come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery
over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it
protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its
owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests,
and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere
property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to
be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has
passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past
duration of man's existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come.
The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a
career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career
contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government,
brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal
education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which
experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be
a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of
the ancient gentes."
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Author's note.
Especially on the northwest coast of America; see Bancroft. Among the
Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands some households gather as many as
700 members under one roof. Among the Nootkas whole tribes lived under
one roof.
[38] Author's note.
The number of slaves in Athens was 365,000. In Corinth it was 460,000 at
the most flourishing time, and 470,000 in Aegina; in both cases ten
times the number of free citizens.
[39] Author's note.
The first historian who had at least a vague conception of the nature of
the gens was Niebuhr, thanks to his familiarity with the Dithmarsian
families. The same source, however, is also responsible for his errors.
[40] Translator's note.
The recent demand for a law declaring the person of the U. S. President
sacred above all other representatives of the public power and making an
assault on him an exceptional crime is a very good case in point.
[41] Translator's note.
"Junker" is a contemptuous term for the land-owning nobility.
[42] Translator's note.
In the United States, the poll tax is an indirect property
qualification, as it strikes those who, through lack of employment,
sickness or invalidity, are unable to spare the amount, however small,
of this tax. Furthermore, the laws requiring a continuous residence in
the precinct, the town, the county, and the State as a qualification for
voters have the effect of disqualifying a great number of workingmen who
are forced to change their abode according to their opportunities for
employment. And the educational qualifications which especially the
Southern States are rigidly enforcing tend to disfranchise the great
mass of the negroes, who form the main body of the working class in
those States.
[43] Translator's note.
In Belgium, where the proletariat is now on the verge of gaining
political supremacy, the battle cry is: "S. U. et R. P." (Suffrage
Universelle et Representation Proportionelle).
[44] Translator's note.
Suffrage in Germany, though universal for men is by no means equal, but
founded on property qualifications. In Prussia, e. g., a three class
system of voting is in force which is best illustrated by the following
figures: In 1898 there were 6,447,253 voters; 3.26 per cent belonged to
the first class, 11.51 per cent to the second class, and 85.35 per cent
to the third class. But the 947,218 voters of the first and second
classes had twice as many votes as the five and a half millions of the
third class.
[45] Author's note.
Lassalle's "System of Acquired Rights" argues in its second part mainly
the proposition that the Roman testament is as old as Rome itself, and
that there has never been in Roman history "a time without a testament."
According to him, the testament had its origin in pre-Roman times in the
cult of the departed. Lassalle, as a convinced Hegelian of the old
school, derives the provisions of the Roman law, not from the social
condition of the Romans, but from the "speculative conception" of will,
and thus arrives at this totally anti-historic conclusion. This is not
to be wondered at in a book that draws from the same speculative
conception the conclusion that the transfer of property was purely a
side issue in Roman inheritance. Lassalle not only believed in the
illusions of Roman jurists, especially of the earlier ones, but he
outstripped their fancy.
[46] Author's note.
I first intended to place the brilliant critique of civilization,
scattered through the works of Fourier, by the side of Morgan's and of
my own. Unluckily I cannot spare the time. I only wish to remark that
Fourier already considers monogamy and private property in land the main
characteristics of civilization, and that he calls them a war of the
rich against the poor. We also find with him the deep perception that
the individual families (les familles incoherentes) are the economic
units of all faulty societies divided by opposing interests.